


Where Lies Your Calling: Shivudu/Mahendra Baahubali

by arpita



Series: Agni Parva [1]
Category: Baahubali (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Gen, History, Nature, Past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-07 07:32:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19080394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arpita/pseuds/arpita
Summary: Shiva comes to terms with his surroundings, and a certain part that is still prohibited.





	Where Lies Your Calling: Shivudu/Mahendra Baahubali

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MayavanavihariniHarini](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayavanavihariniHarini/gifts), [Medhasree](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Medhasree/gifts).



> 1\. The Legend stated herein gets its source from Wikipedia. The author does not, in any way, claim historical authenticity.
> 
> 2\. Thambi, is a fictional name. There is no character in either of the two films of the franchise of this name.

Amboli was a very peaceful, albeit small village, comprised of common folk who didn’t seek much from life, except peace, and happiness. All they knew were two very simple facts, which they strongly believed to be true. One of them, was that they wouldn’t harm anyone, the other being-

_If anyone willed to harm them, they would never go down without a tough fight._

Thus, when Sanga found the baby - _or got him as a blessing from The River Goddess, as she put it_ \- she made up her mind to bring him up in the exact manner as the children in Amboli were brought up. Shivudu, - _as she lovingly christened the child_ \- supposedly came from a royal lineage, but he was her boy now, as The Mother had deemed, and she wouldn’t have it any other way.

Hence, Shiva grew up likewise, a child of nature, nurtured in peace and harmony. But Sanga and her husband couldn’t leave the child defenseless either. Should the evil people residing in the plains that transcended the mountains came for him, again, she would ensure that they would fear him, as they feared The Destroyer. 

Shivudu, for his part, loves Amboli, and the people he knows as his parents. He loved the steep, gushing waterfalls, the silent, yet playful river flowing by their hut. The unending green of the plains flowed in his blood as his father taught him to wield the sword, and the _laathi_. He felt the river sing to him in Sanga’s voice as she sang praises of The Lord of Destruction. His affinity with nature made him feel as if nature was parenting him as much as his mother and father were.

But of course, for all his love for nature, there was one place his mother had absolutely forbidden him to even think about, which was - _the place above the mountaintop._ The people of Amboli knew very well of the Kingdom of Maahishmati, but whether Shivudu belonged therefrom was only a matter of speculation no one ever dwelled on. For them, he was theirs, with all his antics, and childlike innocence, a child of the village.

However, Shivudu’s curiosity with the myth of the mountaintop remained unquenched as years saw him grow into a young man. His mother never mentioned it, neither did his father, no matter how earnestly he goaded them. Only once, once, in his entire life had he heard a very bleak lore of the land that was supposedly called Maahishmati. 

“Protected by Agnishwara himself, they say, it is,”- Thambi had said, - “It is known that a Nishada ruler -Nila was his name, it was, they say- had a beautiful daughter, whose beauty enticed Agnishawara himself. The Lord blazed in his full warmth when graced by her sight, and warmed only when graced by her breath.”

_Such affection,_ Shivudu wondered with awe. Initially, he had been fascinated with the story as a child might have been with a lore. But when youth struck root, Agnishwara’s affections found their way into Shiva’s heart with equal, unabated force. Thambi had also mentioned that The Lord had taken the form of a Brahmana to woo the Princess. When the guise was discovered, the King had ordered Him to be banished, only for his rage to be quelled by Agnidev’s superseding wrath. Later, in a manner of reconciliation, as the King acknowledged his error, The Lord of Fire subdued thus, granted him a boon. The Nishada King for his part had requested Him to keep watch over the Land, as long as it existed. 

Despite Sanga’s multiple persuasions, and restrictions, Shiva had always been persistent in his attempts to scale the Jalparvat, -as they called it. Whether it was to find a Princess who he would fall in love with, as Agnishwara had, or to see how The Lord kept his watch over the Kingdom, he didn’t know. All he knew was, that there was an implicit something that called out to him from there.

A few years later, when Shiva successfully scaled the mountain in his quest for the mysterious enchantress, who he had visions of right after he salvaged the mask, little did he know, that the Fire God was keeping his watch on Maahishmati, in his long lost mother’s eyes, that still sought him, as he kindled in her heart with hope and vengeance alike.


End file.
